OAKLAND, Calif., March 25 Thankfully for second-seeded U.C.L.A., basketball milestones are not graded on style points.
If aesthetics mattered, this U.C.L.A. team would have long been dispatched from the N.C.A.A. tournament. But it’s the final score that counts. By slugging out a 50-45 victory over top-seeded Memphis to win the Oakland Regional on Saturday, the Bruins added to their program’s storied history by clinching their 16th berth in the Final Four.
The way it looked the game was the lowest-scoring regional final in the shot-clock era by a staggering 15 points certainly did not change the way it felt.
“I can’t even explain how incredible it feels,” U.C.L.A. guard Jordan Farmar said. “Besides the guys in the locker room, no one really believed in us.”
By surviving a battle of attrition, the Bruins tied North Carolina for the most Final Four appearances. In Indianapolis, they will play fourth-seeded Louisiana State, an overtime winner over second-seeded Texas in the Atlanta Regional, for a chance at adding to their Division I-record 11 national titles.
They advanced despite missing 16 of their first 21 free throws, making just 14 field goals and not converting from the field in the game’s final 3 minutes 13 seconds. The senior guard Cedric Bozeman, the last Bruin to cut down the net in the postgame celebration, admitted that if he were watching at home on television, he would have probably turned the game off.
But instead, he and his fellow senior Ryan Hollins will be leading U.C.L.A. to its first Final Four appearance since 1995, when it won the championship.
Hollins emerged as the most fitting of stars; he had 14 points and 9 rebounds to win most valuable player honors for the region. But Hollins will best be remembered in this game for his ineptitude at the free-throw line. He shot just 2 for 11, the biggest culprit on a day the Bruins shot 20 for 39 from the stripe.
He recalled telling himself on the bench: “I’ll never forgive myself for the rest of my life if we lose this game and I missed nine free throws. It’s like, we’re going to win this game, we’re getting it up. I’m not going to go out like that.”
And Hollins made sure U.C.L.A. won by stealing an Antonio Anderson pass with just under a minute remaining to seal the game. His steal set up two Bozeman free throws that put U.C.L.A. ahead, 46-39, with 52 seconds to go.
Memphis missed 11 of its first 12 shots from the field and its first 14 3-pointers, but its ineptitude down the stretch provided a convenient snapshot of their struggles.
Darius Washington Jr., the only Tigers player to score in double digits, with 13 points, dove in the lane for an acrobatic layup with 2:59 remaining, making the score 44-39. But the Tigers’ next three possessions consisted of a travel by Joey Dorsey, a missed 3-pointer by Rodney Carney and Hollins’s steal.
For the second consecutive game, U.C.L.A. left the opposition’s best player collapsed in a heap of disappointment on the court at the buzzer. On Thursday, the Gonzaga star Adam Morrison crumpled to the floor after U.C.L.A. scored the game’s final 11 points in an improbable victory.
On Saturday it was Carney, whom Arron Afflalo held to just 5 points and 2-for-12 shooting. Carney played only 26 minutes because of foul trouble and never looked in rhythm.
“We just couldn’t make a basket,” Memphis Coach John Calipari said. “Please make a basket. Make a free throw. Anything. Kick one in.”
Memphis’s foul trouble and offensive ineptitude played right into U.C.L.A.’s game plan, which was to slow the pace and limit the Tigers’ transition opportunities. U.C.L.A. was so disruptive that Memphis’s guards finished with just one assist. The Tigers’ 21 first-half points were their lowest output all season, and they finished with nearly half of the 88 points that they scored when they defeated the Bruins at Madison Square Garden in November.
“That defense caused us to do what we did,” Calipari said. “The bump and grind of it, the physical play of it. When they needed to shut somebody down, they did.”
The concern about the Tigers heading into the Round of Eight was how they would react to being tested. None of their first three opponents, No. 16-seeded Oral Roberts, No. 9-seeded Bucknell and No. 13-seeded Bradley, hailed from a major conference.
Memphis had shot just under 54 percent in those three blowout victories, but the Tigers shot 31 percent Saturday.
“I don’t think I could even dream about that,” Farmar said of holding Memphis to 45 points.
Coach Ben Howland has the Bruins back in the Final Four in his third season in Westwood. Howland came in preaching the defensive style that took Pittsburgh from the doldrums of the Big East to a perennial contender in the conference. And while his style defies West Coast basketball convention, the results can’t be argued with.
Everyone in the U.C.L.A. locker room agreed that while the trip to Indianapolis is nice, the result that everyone in Westwood wants has not arrived yet.
“At U.C.L.A., no other banner but national championships go up,” Farmar said.
